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In the last decade, interaction between scholarly lexicography and the public has grown enormously. While in the old days, the lexicographer and in particular, the scholarly lexicographer, had a tendency to describe the lexicon from an ivory tower, in a way that was for the general public rather unaccessible, a change has been evident for some time now. Interaction with the general public is now more and more appreciated and is even being stimulated within the lexicographic community. This holds too for the Algemeen Nederlands Woordenboek (ANW), a project of the Institute for Dutch Lexicology in Leiden. The ANW is an online scholarly dictionary of contemporary Dutch. In its periodization it is the successor of the Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal (WNT), which was completed in 2001 and covers the vocabulary of the Netherlands and Flanders up to around 1976. The editorial staff of the ANW would like to create a dictionary that is suitable for different audiences, ranging from language professionals and other academics to pupils, students and language enthusiasts in general. Consequently, interaction with the public is very important to the ANW editorial staff. It is realised in various ways. First, each dictionary article offers users the option to give feedback. Second, the editorial staff uses questions and comments gathered on internet forums, such as Meldpunt Taal (launched in June 2010) and Neo-term. The ANW staff also approaches the public directly through Twitter, with items such as ‘neologism of the week’, facts about spelling and answers to questions about language that have been received. A relatively new initiative is to call upon the public in the search for information for the dictionary, such as synonyms, pictures and the earliest use of words. Language games and word polls are other ways to increase the interest and involvement of the general public in the ANW.
The Swedish Academy Dictionary (SAOB) is one of the big national dictionary projects started in the 19th century. SAOB is still in production – there are another two volumes out of 38 to printed before 2018. The structure inside the volumes is (of course) varied/varying. There are ten chief editors and five generations of editors involved in the project. In the 1980s the SAOB was OCR-scanned. The result was used for a webversion in the internet from 1997. The webversion is very frequently used but has a lot of shortcomings due to, among other things, a great typographic complexity and a scanning technology of the time. Now the editorial board is discussing the future: redigitalization (in China), updating of the webversion with new search tools, updating of the dictionary itself and some form of editing tool.
The FEW is a huge dictionary when we consider the sheer mass of data (25 volumes, 16000 pages) and its exhaustive aims. It has indeed the purpose of registering and etymologizing the whole lexicon, not only of French, but also of earlier stages of the language and of Occitan; of every Gallo-romance dialect; of every technical or professional genre; of every language register, including slang. Summing up, the FEW aims to include and describe every single lexical unit which exists or has existed in the territory of ancient Gaul. The sheer size of this undertaking means two things, which directly influence the digitalisation of the dictionary: Firstly, there is a a huge amount of data; secondly, the presentation and organization of the data is exceedingly complex. The reasons for digitalising the FEW are the easy searches for units, and the carrying out of searches using criteria that are not possible to use with the printed version. However, the fulfillment of these purposes includes some risks, and potentially the cutting of some corners, especially the temptation of renouncing reading.